Single parenting is hard. Christmas is stressful. Single parenting at Christmas time? Potentially devastating. Even when your co-parent is collaborative, friendly to you and committed to the kids, there is still a sense of loss when you aren’t able to spend Christmas with your children. The joy of seeing gleeful faces on Christmas morning or the connection to family tradition with your Christmas Eve rituals may be lost to your divorce. When you co-parent with a jerk, Christmas can be a total nightmare. It brings up some of the worst feelings: your relationship with your ex, self-doubt, fears that a happy childhood is lost for your kids, financial stress, and family conflict. So what can you do to help yourself and your kids cope? First, grab a box of tissues and hide from the kids. Some boo-hooing is in order.

1. Acknowledge your negative feelings. Ignore, for a minute, the social pressure to be cheerful during the holidays. Admit that you aren’t okay, you don’t feel jolly, and you won’t be having a merry Christmas. After your wallowing session, you can take a step back and sort through which of those feelings are exaggerated and what you can do to make things better.

2. Figure out some workarounds. Does your family traditionally open a single package on Christmas Eve? Skype it. Is there a tablet or iPod at the other parent’s house? Load favorite apps on devices for both you and your kids. Buy two copies of treasured books. You can read and play along together over the phone.

3. Invest in the creative potential of Santa’s power. Santa can do a lot, including leaving presents in the car that are waiting for your kids when you pick them up again, or tucking a hidden present into your kid’s coat pocket. Santa can leave presents when and where he wants. He’s flexible, and he can create magic in nontraditional places at nontraditional times if you’ll only let him.

4. Get your geek on. Make a DVD of your kids’ favorite photos and set it to their favorite music. Audio record yourself reading a story and put it on a CD, thumb drive, mp3 player, or your kid’s cell phone. Post a private video message on YouTube for your kids to watch whenever they want.

5. Connect with other single moms. No one else knows what it’s really like, not even your family. Not even your parents, even if they are divorced too. The family court system is different now, and you need moms who are deep in the middle of it that can genuinely understand and empathize. Make plans to be together and find strength in numbers.

6. Schedule your sadness. Give your grief some space, an opportunity to be treated as a valid feeling that is at odds with what you wish you could feel instead. Then plan a time for those feelings to be set aside so that you can seek out and embrace the joys in life as well. You may not be completely able to fit your feelings into a calendar, but reserving some time to explicitly deal with your emotional pain may help prevent that pain from taking over.

7. Do grown-up things. Make a list of benefits to having your kids gone. Rated R movies! Girls Night Out! All the foods you love that your kids hate! A nice Merlot! A clean house! Sleeping in! A six hour TNG-athon! Take care of yourself.

8. Celebrate Three Kings Day. Trying to celebrate Christmas a couple of days early or late can feel phony, and serve to highlight the difficulties of what you and your kids are going through by pretending that something as socially important as Christmas can just be shifted to another day. Three Kings Day is celebrated in many cultures throughout the world, and there is a rich body of traditions you and your kids can draw on. The twelve days of Christmas? They actually refer to the days between Christmas and Epiphany. Magic presents delivered in the night? Leave out some grass for the Kings’ horse and the Kings will leave presents just like Santa. You’ll get the benefit of shopping for gifts during those after Christmas sales, too. For most moms, this is a holiday you’ll never have to share with your ex. It can belong to you and your kids, and can be just as reliable and full of tradition as you wish your Christmas could be.

Not all of these suggestions will work for everyone. I’ve been single parenting for a long time, and my son and I have only been able to share two Christmases together in the last decade. It’s tough, for both of us. But over the years, we’ve found ways to make it work. Three Kings Day is a huge deal. We’ll stay home from work and school, wake up early to presents under the tree, and then we’re throwing a party for the other single moms and kids we know. We make, and find, our own holiday joy every year. I’ll handle my sadness privately, without letting it take over.

Merry Christmas and Happy Three Kings Day to all the single moms and their kids. We can do it!

The year 2011 is my do-over. Various oops-es, failed experiments, and “Aw damn” moments have ironically led me to a pretty good place. I’m the mother of a beautiful little girl who is blossoming into a promising young geeklet. My writing career is gaining momentum. I’ve established my independence and have never been more self-confident. Right now my possibilities are endless and it feels so very good.

So that leaves me in a place to look for my first-ever valentine.

Comic from xkcd.com

Yeah, you read right. I’ve never had a valentine. I don’t say that to get pity or a “Poor GeekMom” reaction. It’s just a matter of fact that I’ve never had a valentine. Even when I was a kid and my class mates were required to bring those cute little cards with cartoon characters and kitty cats, I never got a special note with a “Check Yes or No” message.Valentine’s Day has never (ever) been my favorite holiday. I was either perpetually single or in a rather loveless marriage. To top it off it was my ex-husband’s and my tradition to argue on every holiday. Valentine’s Day included.

For a good number of years, I would actually begin to sink into a quasi-depression around this time of year. All those cutesy little, gag-inducing goodies that grace the front aisle of every store used to mock my singleness. I didn’t actually want any of them, not being a chocolate fan or a stuffed creature lover. I’m too practical to appreciate flowers and too absent-minded to keep track of diamonds. The stuff didn’t really matter. What I wanted was someone to give me cutesy little Valentine gifts. I wanted a valentine.

There is no depression this year, but there is still the desire to have a valentine. More than that, I would like to get married again. My first marriage didn’t work but that doesn’t mean I’ve condemned the institution entirely. Perhaps I’m overly optimistic. Perhaps I’m still quite young. But I’d like to believe that people in my age group are capable of marrying and staying that way.

When an older couple in my church announced that they were celebrating their sixtieth wedding anniversary I was struck with a rather numbing realization. The chances that I can ever enjoy a sixtieth wedding anniversary are rapidly dimming. Statistically speaking, even if I were to marry tomorrow a man my same age, we would be eighty-six on our anniversary. According to the CIA, the average life expectancy of a man is only seventy-eight. It’s only eighty-one for women. While few of my friends have lived thirty years, let alone lived long enough to be married thirty years much less sixty, I am gaining more and more divorced friends. Fewer and fewer of us will be able to accomplish what generations past are managing.

But I have other reasons for wanting to remarry. I know a good number of single mom’s who have sworn never to sport that left hand-band ever again and for good reasons. So here are my good, geeky reasons for wanting to try marriage again.

I want someone who will be as excited as I am when I get to bring home explosives from work. Insurance, liability, blah blah blah…Let’s go light something on fire!

I want to prove that love really is for everyone. I mean the deck is sort of stacked against me. I’m divorced, chubby, a complete and hopeless geek, a total nerd, balance a full-time career with a full compliment of other activities including starting a non-profit organization, and have a kid. If that is considered baggage, I’m a freaking super-freight cargo ship. But I also believe that there is someone out there who is as excited to deal with all that as I am.

I enjoy experimenting with all the online dating companies in as clinical a fashion as I can manage. See the complete and hopeless geek statement above.

As with most people looking for love and marriage, I really want to share my passions, enthusiasms, near obsessions, (actual obsessions), and joys with someone. It’s a lot to ask of a normal person. I’m seeking a geek this time around.

I was so very young and naive the first time around. I’m eager to experience love as a real adult. (As opposed to the pretend one I was.)

I want my daughter to see that grown-ups make mistakes. We learn from them and move on with our heads held high. Just because something is hard (and marriage is hard) doesn’t mean you should give up on it.

Now those are just my reasons and only very briefly synopsized. I have others that are my own and range from inanely shallow to immensely philosophical but here is not the place and now is not the time for all that. What about other GeekMoms? I know there are only two of us contributors who get to wade out into the sea seeking those prophesied “other fish”. But what about our readers? Any other single moms trying to remember how to date? Trying to figure out what new moves you have to add to mix momming and dating? Or have you already succeeded the second, third, fourth or next time around?

I’ll be single again for Valentine’s 2011 but that doesn’t mean I go valentine-less for the twenty-sixth time.

(For an greatly extended, more personal version of this article, visit seejennlive.wordpress.com)